University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Frame by Frame

Posts Tagged ‘Broadcasting’

In the 1950s and 60s, commercial radio and television in Britain were unknown. The BBC — the British Broadcasting Corporation — was the only game in town, a government run enterprise that was commercial free, but much like today’s cable systems, obtained its revenue by requiring anyone who owned a radio or television to pay an annual licensing fee, a practice that continues to this day.

The BBC produced, and continues to produce, excellent television and radio programming, but in the early 1960s, the BBC wasn’t inclined to embrace pop music, and so Radio Caroline, a “pirate” radio station, took up the challenge, and began broadcasting pop music from a ship safely anchored outside the three-mile limit international waters, creating an entirely new style of DJ programming – the “motor mouth DJ” who played as many records as possible during any given hour, sandwiched in between an avalanche of commercials – something that no one in Britain had experienced up until that point.

Teenagers embraced Radio Caroline, which broadcast the latest pop hits from 6AM to 6PM daily, and it isn’t too much to say that it changed the face of radio in Great Britain, much to the BBC’s displeasure. Radio Luxembourg was another “pirate” pop station of the era, broadcasting pop music from that country 24 hours a day, in English, again using manic DJs who played nonstop pop, while also throwing in as many commercials as absolutely possible.

None of this was new to the United States, of course, where radio stations had been commercial from the start, and flagship pop stations of the era, such as WABC (“Radio 77″ – now, sadly, a talk radio station) were instrumental in bringing the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and other British pop acts to national prominence in America.

The pop musician Dave Clark once observed that if you wanted your record to be a hit on Radio Caroline or Radio Luxembourg, you’d better make it short, repetitive, and to the point, as you could estimate that only 45 seconds of your song would actually make it on to the air uninterrupted by commercial pitches at the beginning and end of the disc. But it served as an invaluable service for pop musicians, because it was the only way to get their music before the public — which teenagers would then buy as 45 RPM “singles” in record shops.

And thus it was with pop music in the 60s – relentlessly commercial, frantic in delivery, but opening up an entirely new world for listeners, and signalling the emergence of top 40 pop radio as an international format. It all seems very quaint now, but at the time, it was a revolution.

About the Author

Wheeler Winston Dixon, Ryan Professor of Film Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is an internationally recognized scholar and writer of film history, theory and criticism. He is the author of thirty books and more than 100 articles on film, and appears regularly in national media outlets discussing film and culture trends. Frame by Frame is a collection of his thoughts on a number of those topics. To contact Prof. Dixon for an interview, reach him wdixon1@unl.edu or his website, wheelerwinstondixon.com